Five female airport staffers killed in Afghanistan

Provincial spokesman Samim Kheplwak said Saturday that at least three attackers fired shots at the women while there were in a van on their way to work at the airport in the southern Kandahar Province on Saturday.

“All the women and their driver aboard the van were killed. The attackers fled the area and we have launched an investigation,” Kheplwak said.

Kandahar International Airport Director Ahmadullah Faizi said the women worked for a private company and were in charge of providing luggage and body search services for female passengers.

He said the women had received death threats from people who opposed their career.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack so far, but female employees in Kandahar have long been a target of Taliban militants and other extremist groups.

The Taliban militant group lost its grip over Afghanistan in the US-led military invasion of 2001, but security has not been delivered to the country despite the presence of foreign boots on Afghan soil.

Afghan females are still absent from public life and continue to suffer high levels of violence, oppression, and abuse.

According to the Afghan attorney general’s office, over 3,700 cases of violence against women have been recorded in the first eight months of 2016, while 5,000 cases were registered in the whole of 2015.